Diversity in underwater inspection
- Sea Test Services, Merritt Island, FL (United States)
Underwater nondestructive testing (NDT) of deepwater structures provides a diverse, hostile, and challenging means to implement NDT. Given a warm, shallow water with good visibility, working underwater approaches the category of ``I get paid for this.`` This environment allows for identical reliability as ``topside`` NDT. Underwater visual, magnetic particle, and ultrasonic testing have been in place since the early 1980s, with equipment modified for submergence and closely resembling topside NDT tools. However, deepwater structures represent the most unique of NDT considerations. In the Gulf of Mexico, there are approximately 15 fixed structures installed at a depth of 243--400 m. This article describes safety, technical, and commercial issues relating to inspecting deepwater structures and focuses especially on a comparison of remote operated vehicles (ROVs) and atmospheric diving suits (ADSs). Deepwater structures have excellent records of structural integrity with an extremely low incidence of corrosion or fatigue cracking problems. The primary reason for developing deepwater NDT capabilities is contingency for damage during installation impact damage from dropped objects. There are three means used for underwater NDT: diving, atmospheric diving suits (ADSs), and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
- OSTI ID:
- 218512
- Journal Information:
- Materials Evaluation, Journal Name: Materials Evaluation Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 54; ISSN MAEVAD; ISSN 0025-5327
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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